Game Show Memories – Hit Me Baby One More Time.

Hit Me Baby One More Time (ITV1, 2005)

When putting more pieces together about some of my favourite pop music memories recently, I was reminded of this show, that featured several pop stars from days gone by. Hit Me Baby One More Time was hosted by Vernon Kay, and this was yet another singing talent show, which was a little similar to Reborn In The USA from a year earlier, although I think this was much better.

In this, various singers and groups from the 70s, 80s, and 90s competed against each other to determine the favourite. Now as this was just before social media came along, this probably would’ve been the first time in a while that these people had been in the spotlight. Now of course it’s possible for them to document what they do all day online, and it’s odd to think that I must’ve seen and read more about some singers who took part in the past few years, then in just about the 90s and 2000s put together.

There were seven shows, featuring five acts each. Now how to pick a winner out of some of these would be a difficult choice, one edition featured Belinda Carlisle and Jaki Graham, who are both great singers, so that would definitely be a group of death. However, neither of them won their show. Also taking part were Howard Jones (or was it Nik Kershaw?), Mica Paris, Hue And Cry, Chesney Hawkes, Princess, and many more. It was great seeing a lot of them again, and they still had plenty of talent and charisma.

After an introduction, along the lines of the usual “they’ve sold 99 million albums worldwide!” fluff to remind us who they were, they performed their most famous song. And in an interesting twist, they would then perform a song by a contemporary act. There really were some surprises in store. So you would get people cover songs in unlikely genres, such as Jaki Graham taking on Will Young, and Belinda Carlisle did Coldplay.

Viewers at home could then vote for their favourite via phone or text, and the winner progressed to the final. The prize for the overall winner was to release a single. I do remember that a lot of the publicity seemed to be describing this as the big comeback for Shakin’ Stevens, and he was indeed the winner. This meant that his cover of Pink’s “Trouble” was released, and this made the Top 20, his first single to do so for 15 years.

But then, very shortly after the end of Hit Me Baby One More Time, there was an American version on NBC, and this was also hosted by Kay, possibly making an attempt to break into American TV. The format was almost the same (a few acts who had been successful on both sides of the Atlantic took part in this version too), but instead of a final, the winner of every show (after a studio audience vote) received $20,000 to donate to a charity of their choice.

And there were five editions, instead of eight like there were in the UK version. Again, some vaguely familiar names featured. And would you believe it, Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons took part in one edition, performing “Words”, and her take on Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”. She lost to PM Dawn though. Both versions only ran for one series.

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